


A Hill of Beans

by Fiorenza_a



Category: The Professionals
Genre: Episode Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-10
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:53:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiorenza_a/pseuds/Fiorenza_a
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Germans had still worn grey, but Marikka hadn't worn blue and they'd never had Paris.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Hill of Beans

Bodie hated bars like this. They were the past and he'd done away with the past. It was a stale, windowless, dismal drinking den, perfect for anonymous transactions of every kind. He'd been between jobs, at least that's what he'd being telling himself for the last six months. The truth was the jobs had been there, he'd just lost the stomach for them. Not that that was important anymore.

At least the lager was better than back home. Wherever that was now. Was he still English? He had a passport which said so, but then last year he'd had one which had claimed he was French.

Rotterdam; if it wasn't the arse end of the universe it felt like it. Casablanca would have been more fitting. Was it still the love of your life if it ended in Rotterdam? Could you lose the one woman who got under your skin and broke all the rules in Rotterdam? Did 'goodbye' still have a right to hurt if it was some run down dockyard boozer and not Rick's Café Américain? The Germans had still worn grey, but she hadn't worn blue and they'd never had Paris. Berlin, briefly, then Bonn, but never Paris.

He'd bought her roses in Berlin. She'd laughed and scandalised him by tearing the petals from the long stems and scattering them on the bed. She'd kept only one bloom, placing it decadently in a tumbler of champagne before, between kisses, pouring the rest of the sparkling alcohol into flutes. They'd made silly romantic toasts to love and the future and for those few hours he'd believed. Believed that he could have love and a future. He'd gone on believing, she'd made it easy to believe. Now, if he took away the scent of the roses, he could see that she hadn't promised him anything, not really, not in so many words. He'd known she was on a leash, tethered by the limits of a cold war, that he couldn't go back with her and that she couldn't stay with him, but still he'd believed. Stupidly, naively, believed.

Occasionally during the halcyon months he'd thought of vanishing; of spiriting her away with him. Other men had girls. But even as the dreams took shape he knew them to be hopeless. She still had relatives in the East, there was no question of her not going back. Even if there had been, she lived in a world of champagne and roses. There were hotels in Africa where a man could keep a woman accustomed to such things, he had money and favours enough to call upon. But he knew she expected more than that. She expected respectability, civility more than veneer deep, quaint, old fashioned and still the only sure protection for a woman with only an uncertain, fledgling career and no wealth of her own. She wouldn't have that as a kept woman in the manicured luxury of a segregated hotel. And he wouldn't be there to protect her if the veneer failed.

And so his dreams had taken a new shape. A shape which had led him to consider leaving Africa and trying soldiering of a different sort. He'd already been interviewed, assessed and accepted, which is why he'd dusted off his British passport, he couldn't risk getting picked up travelling on anything else, and it was why he was in Rotterdam.

The first time he'd been to Rotterdam it had been as a boy sailor. Since then he'd been through it so many times that he'd acquired an account and a safety deposit box in one of the city's banks. For years there'd been five decent rough diamonds tucked away in that safety deposit box and in Amsterdam he'd known a man expert enough to cut one of the stones and discreet enough to keep quiet about it. He'd needed a ring, just like the countless other British soldiers who'd ever wanted to marry a German.

A ring she'd never see, the answer to a question he'd never ask. Not of any woman. Not now. He'd made himself the prize of all fools and he'd never be that stupid, that vulnerable, again. Vulnerable. Yes he'd allowed himself to be that. She'd made him that. After everything. After being resilient enough to survive as a boy in a man's world, no not survive, he'd done more than that, he'd thrived. Popular, tough and respected. There were men who called him friend in almost every part of the globe. Men he liked and respected in return, though he'd allowed no one close enough to do him any harm. To see him as she'd seen him. To make of him what she'd made of him. He'd never been ashamed of having gentleness within him, but she'd made him soft. Unwary and trusting. She'd made him gullible.

He took another swig of lager and wondered if the battered jukebox near the cigarette machine had _As Time Goes By_ on the playlist. Would it sound the same away from the dinner jackets and intrigue of Hollywood fantasy? What he had seen of the reality of Casablanca and its cigarette smoke had proven unglamorously seedy on the one occasion he could remember being there.

Fuelled by the excitement of the new life opening up before him, not the change from soldiering for countries other than his own, but the change from soldiering as a single man, he'd called her. The 'phone had rung until it cut out, he'd rung back and it had rung almost as long again before being picked up. A man had answered, one word: ''Gruber.''

A name, not her name, perfunctory, proprietorial, the room his not hers. Bodie had known of course, she had no influence of her own, the limited freedom to explore the rest of her divided country had been granted only because of him. She travelled with him, slept with him, was commanded by him, but she hadn't toasted the glories of love with him, or scattered rose petals on their shared sheets.

''Mrs Jones? I'm trying to speak to Mrs Jones?'' Bodie had responded. It was their code and their joke. Not that they'd ever checked in as Mr and Mrs Jones. With the intransigent formality of hotel clerks everywhere he had always been Mr Bodie and she had been Frau Gruber. _Me and Mrs Gruber, we got a thing going on..._ No hope of that on a jukebox anywhere.

Gruber hadn't even bothered replying to an enquiry made in English, he'd simply made an impatient noise and replaced the receiver.

There was no hope of marriage to Gruber, the Godwary Democratic Republic not having seen fit to espouse bigamy, but he had influence and power enough to protect both her and her reputation in the civilised jungles of Europe.

So Bodie had sat at the bar drinking lager and waiting until she rang the payphone number he'd left with reception. When eventually she had he'd leapt to his feet to grab the receiver, anxious of nothing but hearing her voice, none of the current smattering of dopey eyed barflies impressing as having had the reflexes to beat him to it, even supposing they'd mustered the inclination.

''Bodie'' she'd breathed into his ear as if he still lay on her pillow.

''Hello'' he'd replied, as if she'd only just opened her eyes to him.

''I'm sorry Gruber didn't pick up the 'phone. I was in the bath. If I'd been able, I'd have answered sooner. I wouldn't have just let you ring like that.''

Bodie smiled, she never spoke of the German as anything but 'Gruber'. He wondered if that was the name she used when he was sweating over her. 'Bodie' was the name she gasped when they made love, she never hesitated or misspoke, he wondered if she was as conscientiously punctilious with her other lover. ''Look, I need to talk to you properly, not over the 'phone like this, where will you be tomorrow?''

''Oh Bodie, I can't, not tomorrow.''

''The day after then, it's important...for both of us. Very important. I don't want to...not like this, not over the 'phone...Look it's not the sort of thing I go round doing, but...''

''Oh Bodie, I'm sorry, but I can't, I just can't.''

''Can't what?''

''He doesn't want me to see you again.''

''He doesn't...He knows about us?'' Something cavernous and achingly cold opened up beneath him.

''Of course he knows Bodie. He would have found out anyway. I'm watched all the time, especially here. He has to be careful, a man in his position. You don't know what it's like.''

''So you told him?''

''When I met you. He's like you, he's not possessive. I think that's what I love about him most, the freedom he gives me.''

''Love...?'' A one word sucker punch.

''Yes, when I said I'd met you, how much I liked you, he said he'd check you out, make sure I wasn't getting myself into any trouble. You came up clean. Well as clean as any soldier of fortune can. Not political, not a security risk, not dishonest. Gruber looks out for me. He knew I'd be lonely with him busy all day and not knowing anyone. He approves of you. Thinks you're good for me. He says I've been happier since I met you and it's true, I have. You make me happy.''

''But he doesn't want you seeing me again...?'' His mind was still stumbling.

''You have to understand, there are people watching everywhere...''

''I thought you said he wasn't possessive.''

''He isn't, he likes you, he likes how good you've been for me, but he has enemies, he can't afford to be associated with a British soldier. You can see that can't you Bodie? You can see how that would be for him? I wish you'd waited until we were ready to go back. If you'd needed money he could have found you work, if you hadn't joined up, he would have let us go on seeing each other. I promise it would have been good between us. I'm sorry that I'll never see you in uniform. I would have been proud of you.''

''Sod all else to be proud of. How did I get it so wrong? What a bloody fool, I really thought you wanted me...''

''Oh Bodie, I do. I do. So very much. It made me miserable when Gruber told me I couldn't see you again. Poor Gruber, he's so kind. I think he feels guilty that he can't offer me marriage. He knows I think you're special and you are special, so special. I don't think you know how special.''

''Just not special enough.''

''Oh Bodie it's not like that. Please don't think that, it's not that. This isn't easy for me.''

''You should try it from my end sweetheart. I thought...God have I really been that stupid? I thought...''

''I never told you I could love you.''

''No but you made me believe it.''

''I know, I'm sorry. Where are you?''

''Rotterdam.''

''Do you still have a room in Bonn?''

''No, I checked out, you said you were going back to Berlin, or were those just words too?''

''Don't Bodie, don't be like that, we are going back, tonight, but you can't follow, you can't come back here. Get out of Rotterdam, you'll be safe in the army, he won't touch you there, you'll be no threat to him there. Just stay away. Don't call, don't write, please don't...''

''Don't what? Don't love you? Think about you? What the hell is going on Marikka? Did you know all this before I left? Before you stuck me on that damn train and told me you'd be waiting for me? How much of an idiot have I been? How much of an idiot am I being now? Was any of it real?''

''Of course it was real, but if I'd told you before you left, would you have gone? You'll never make it back to Bonn before we check out and I won't give you our new number. I know you could find us in Berlin, Gruber says you're capable of that, he says it's best this way, he says if you find us he'll have no choice, don't you see, he's protecting all of us, he's a good man.''

''Even this was Gruber's idea? Did he tell you how to look at the station? Did he tell you how to kiss me? How your eyes should look when I kissed you? Did you replay it for him afterwards? Show him how easy it was to play me?''

''It's not like that Bodie, it's never been like that, it was your idea to go, you said you had something to do. Gruber told me to let you, that we'd be gone by the time you got back, that it would be easier this way. Safer.''

''Oh this is easy all right, this is the easiest thing I've ever done, the other bastards who wanted to slice my guts open came at me with a knife, this is nothing, not a mark on me.''

''Oh Bodie...''

''I love you...you hear that? Bloody joke isn't it? Bet Eros is laughing his sodding socks off. I know I am...can't remember ever finding anything this bloody funny.''

''Bodie, I never meant to hurt you...''

''Oh yeah? What did you mean then? Can't have been anything you said, must have been something you did. Oh yeah, you screwed me, that must have been what you meant.''

''Please Bodie, please don't be like this. I can't bear that I've hurt you.''

''Fine, just so long as we don't do anything _you_ can't bear.'' He was near choking now on something bile black and bitter.

''Bodie...are you...? Have I...? Are you crying?''

''Going to tell Gruber that too are you? Give the man a bloody good laugh? Why not? He might as well get his money's worth.''

''Oh Bodie, I wish I was there with you. I wish I could hold you. I wish I could see your face.''

''No you don't. Trust me on that darling, no you don't.''

''You hate me that much?''

''Not you, God help me, never you. I hate myself. I swore I'd never let anyone do this to me. You wouldn't have been able to, if I hadn't let you. I don't know why I did. I don't know what's wrong with me. I know better than this. Never let anyone in. I know that. I don't know why I forgot it. You must really be something. Maybe that's why I'm in love with you. How stupid does that sound? It sounds pretty bloody stupid to me. I deserve everything I get.''

''Everything but this, everything but its ending this way. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have let you love me, I could see it happening, I just couldn't stop it. I didn't want to stop it, I still don't, I want us to be together. We're so good together, I'll never forget how good.''

''Gruber not much in the sack eh?''

''Don't. You know I didn't mean that, not about him, not about you. I'd have been happy if all we'd ever had was this, just talking to you, hearing your voice, missing you. I'll never let Gruber buy me roses, I'll never let anybody, not again. I'll never be able to see them without thinking of you. Without thinking of this. How badly this is ending.''

''I wish I believed that. I wish I believed you. I wish I believed anything.''

''Go to England Bodie, be happy, for both of us.''

''Don't worry, I'm going to England, I don't have much choice, not anymore, not if I don't want anybody looking for me, him, the army. Run out of options. But happy? No I don't think I can do that, I don't think I'll be able to do that for a long time.''

''Try Bodie, if only for me, please try.''

''You're not even going to leave me that, are you? Even my misery, you want it all don't you? Nothing left for me. Why did I ever meet you? I was doing fine before I met you. Now...now I'm not sure I'll ever be fine again. God I must have had more than I thought. I didn't think there was another way left for me to make an idiot of myself, looks like I'm wrong again. Christ what a mess.''

''I'm so sorry Bodie. Goodbye.''

''No! Not yet, please don't ring off, not yet.''

''I'm just hurting you.''

''It's better than nothing.''

''Oh God Bodie, I'm so sorry. I thought...I thought...''

''I was stronger than this? You and me both luv, you and me both. Kicker isn't it?''

''I'm so sorry Bodie.''

''Yeah me too. Never been more sorry in me life. Hell of a way to start a new career.''

''You'll be a good soldier. Gruber says you were good in Africa.''

''Well so long as he's impressed...''

''You'll do fine, you'll see. It won't last, nothing ever does. You won't feel this way forever.''

''I won't feel this way in an hour. I'm going to get steaming drunk and I'm going to stay that way until this whole sorry mess looks like a bad dream.''

''Don't do anything stupid Bodie...''

''Bit late for that, don't you think?''

''I mean it Bodie, you can't come after us.''

''Do you want my word? Would it mean anything to you? Do words matter to you at all?''

''Yours do. Do you promise?''

''Someone up there is really taking the piss. It's not the promise I came here to make.''

''Do you promise?''

''Oh what the hell, yeah. Yeah, I promise.''

''And you promise to go to England? Get on with your life? Be good to yourself? I can't take care of you, I need to know that you'll take care of yourself.''

''I...''

''Bodie, please, promise me.''

''God in heaven...Yes, I promise you.''

''We need to say goodbye now.''

''No.''

''Yes Bodie, this isn't doing either of us any good.''

''I love you.''

''I know. I'm sorry.''

''I trusted you.''

''I never lied to you.''

''Then why do I feel like this?''

''I'm sorry Bodie. Goodbye Bodie.''

He'd said his goodbye into the dialling tone and hung up the receiver. All she'd left him with to face the future alone contained in a holdall of new clothes, a diamond ring he hadn't been able to give away and about half a pint of lager.

Morose and listless, he finished the lager and bought a bottle of navy rum from the barman and headed out into the greyness of the day. There was a fine drizzle, almost no more than damp air. The water glistened on his skin and beaded like opalescent seed pearls on the wool of his jacket.

He sat on a bollard and stared out into the murky oil slicked waters of the harbour. The poetic thing, he thought as he twisted the cap off the rum, would be to fling the ring into the flotsam ridden waters and let the platinum set stone rest with Davy Jones.

But he'd had his belly full of romantic notions and the practical thing was to return the ring to the safety deposit box and leave it to do its rotting there. The stones were good but not a King's ransom, they'd buy a house and an annuity if he ever sold them. They were big enough that skilled hands could take the price of their cutting and setting from the smaller stones pared from each of the dirty nuggets of compressed carbon. The ring had almost paid for itself, at the time he had only been counting the cost in guilders.

He took a swig of the rum and let the blood of Nelson mingle with his own, warming him against the chill. He didn't expect to sell the stones. They were a hedge bet. He didn't expect to have to worry about grey hair let alone an annuity. There was a bullet waiting for him somewhere. He'd thought he'd find it in Africa, now it looked as if he'd find it in Ireland. Not that it mattered. Dead was dead.

Was he really that dangerous to Gruber? Maybe Gruber was just cautious. Caution kept you alive whatever your geography. Truth was it'd probably take a couple of years before he got anywhere near information sensitive enough to make risking his cultivation worthwhile; if he ever did. There were probably enough moles in the M.O.D. to keep even Beatrix Potter happy. It was doubtful that anyone thought his contribution would keep the lights of East Berlin burning. Marikka had probably told him the truth about that, he was no more to anyone than an unnecessary risk.

Neither was he possessive, you couldn't love 'em and leave 'em and keep 'em and hold 'em, but he'd been ready; ready to forsake all others; ready to hope she felt the same way. What a bloody joke. She hadn't wanted his fidelity, nor offered her own. Footloose and fancy free, isn't that what he'd said so often? No, not said, boasted. Chickens home to roost, hoist by his own petard and every other bastard cliché. Irony was a wonderful thing if it wasn't tearing your guts out.

The rum poured ease and comfort down his throat. He had a week yet before he was due to report. He couldn't afford to yield too far to the temptation of dissipation. Not if he was going to honour his promise. He'd worked at keeping his fitness these last idle months. If that promise was all he had left of his dreams then he'd keep that too.

Looked at now, through the warm haze of rum and the chill mist of grey drizzle, it was all so clear. He'd never had anything. Moments stolen from another man, the corona of a love given elsewhere, was he so desperate for affection that he'd not seen it for what it was? A shadow play of the real thing? Was his own love suspect when the object of it was nothing but a wraith conjured by his loneliness? Had he misunderstood? Had he seen so little of love that the nature of it eluded him? Was he that broken?

Was that why? _Never let anyone in_. He'd said it and he'd meant it. Lived his life by it. He did know better and yet he'd abandoned every rule for her. Gone meek and rejoicing to the slaughter, delusional in his sacrifice. He'd deserved everything he'd got. Would he be bellyaching now if his injury had been caused by any other form of dereliction?

He took another swig of dark rum. Lesson learned. Rules there for a reason. Never let anyone in. Never care more than superficially. Man or woman, give only that loyalty required by duty. Ultimately everyone dies alone, only made sense to live that way. Bodies warm and willing, leave love to the Agony Aunts, they understood it. He was on a one way express ticket anyway. He saw it in the eyes of every man whose back he protected. No one expected him to make thirty. Fine by him, he'd had a gut full of life anyway. He felt old, tired and used. Until Marikka he'd just been going through the motions. God he'd thought he was unhappy then. Life really had decided to piss all over him. Well that gave him two choices; live or die; he'd promised away his right to die, so that left live.

So okay, he'd live, but he'd have the last laugh. Marikka didn't know about the bullet. His own personal get out of jail free card. All he had to do was wait. It would find him. It was the closest he came to religion, the certainty of that bullet. ''I believe in me and that bullet'' he announced to the wheeling seagulls, saluting them with the raised bottle. The souls of the dead called back to him and he answered them. ''Defecting to the army, will you still take me if I die in sodding green?'' Finding the thought grimly humorous, he took another swig by way of appreciation.

The bottle was two thirds empty, he'd need to stir his stumps if he was going to find another and a room for the night. Somehow using his return ticket didn't have the appeal it'd had this morning.

The wounds would heal, they either did or they killed you. There wasn't much in between in his experience. He'd learned his lesson and learned it well, he'd never give his loyalty again. He'd never let anyone close enough to turn him inside out. Never give anyone mastery of his soul. Not until the gulls came to claim him as one of their own.

No, he'd never give any commander more of himself than regulation demanded and he'd never, ever, stand as he had, stripped bare, waiting to see if vicious, capricious fate had it in mind to steal another precious life from him.

Never, for as long as he lived, which wouldn't be long, because, as the gulls knew, he'd be dead in green before thirty.

  
 

END

 

[Casablanca](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casablanca_\(film\))

[Me & Mrs Jones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me_and_Mrs._Jones)

[Me & Mrs Jones](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWOTdt9Bovk) YouTube (Vid) 


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